Disney "steals" monetization from Star Wars Fan Film (Vader: Episode 1 - Shards of the Past)...

[FreeDiver]

If joy was a commodity, Corporate Disney would just acquire the rights to it, bottle and sell it for more than we can afford.

Ya! And if Disney could have there way. They would also required you to get a license to use your imagination as well.

 

[FreeDiver]

I'm going to be quoting Doug Walker (Nostalgia Critic) and others from his "Where's the Fair Use?" video here.

"After Google bought YouTube, Viacom immediately went to court against them for all the content being played without their permission. Funny, seeing how Viacom actually uploaded about a hundred of the videos they tried to sue YouTube over. YouTube was able to defend itself with the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act), and safe harbor provisions. They created a system that would shed any responsibility for any videos uploaded on YouTube, and again in theory, help protect its creators. This system was, is, and will continue to be abused. The system is there's two penalties for copyright infringement: a claim or a strike.

A strike is the most severe. Your video gets taken down from YouTube because a copyright owner sent a complete legal request asking YouTube to do so. Just one strike limits your channel, including only airing fifteen minute videos, and an inability to dispute copyright claims for six months. You get three of these, and your channel is gone.
And then there's the more popular, yet "less severe", penalty, claims. If content ID detects copyrighted material within your video, then an automatic action will take place. This action is entirely dependent on what the copyright holder previously set it to do. For example, if I owned a movie, and I wanted to add it to YouTube's content ID system, I would get to decide how much footage of my film would need to appear in someone else's video, before it automatically claims it.
You can also receive claims that were filed manually. A manual claim implies someone actually watched the video, and determined it was infringing, before actually filing the claim.

YouTube's system is set up in such a way that it incentivizes claimants to abuse it, and that is precisely why their system is so rampant with abuse. You can file a dispute, and then it is up to the claimant to respond to your dispute within thirty days. If they don't respond in thirty days, then their claim will be removed, and your video will be back to normal. If they do respond, they can either remove the claim or reinstate the claim. If they reinstate the claim, then you have to file an appeal, and they have yet another thirty days to respond to that.
The most excruciating part was the lack of human interaction from anyone at YouTube. The automated forums and e-mails seemed designed in such a way that no human working at YouTube will actually ever see it, so it makes you feel pretty helpless and pretty worthless. There was no one I could contact to fix a very, VERY simple problem. So, the entire situation was elongated and needlessly blown comically out of proportion.

I see no reason why there should be a limit on the amount of appeals I can send when there is no limit on the amount of claims I can receive. And what's worse is that, even if the amount of appeals was increased, I would still only be able to really use two at a time. Reason being is that during the appeals process, the claimant has the option to remove your video and issue a strike on your account. You can fight to get the video back up, and the strike removed from your channel by filing a counter notification, but those can take up to a month to complete as well. And as soon as you have three strikes on your channel at any one time, your channel is automatically removed. So, even though I am technically allowed three appeals at once, I make sure to limit myself to two, in case all of them come back with take-down notices.

There are no penalties for companies creating false claims or strikes. In fact, there's a claim where you can take someone's monetization on a video, even if the claim turns out to be false.
So if a studio says "Hey, your (Insert Film/TV Show Name) review, that's our review 100%", they can take the money you're supposed to be making on it until you file a counter claim. And if they never fight it or are proven to be wrong, they still get to keep all the money that they made on your video, no questions asked.
You would think that studios wouldn't be able to go around filing fraudulent claims against people's videos, but not only do they do that, but they often outsource other companies to do it for them. I've received countless claims from a rights management company, known as "egeda", and this claimant in particular is one of the worst to deal with. You can dispute your claim, and provide factual evidence as to why your video falls under fair use, and they just reinstate the claim anyway and often issue a take-down notice on your video."

What's worse about this is that even videos that use re-enactments or don't use any footage at all in order to avoid this situation - such as the Midnight Screening reviews, which is just two people in a car talking about a movie with no images, audio or clips from the film they're talking about - can still receive claims and strikes despite there been no copyrighted material at all within their videos.

"So, what started out as a means to protect studios and content creators is now being used as a means to silence and steal. We're at a point now where, not only is this becoming more and more wrong, it's becoming illegal. In the case of "Lenz vs Universal", Universal claimed a twenty-nine second video of a baby dancing to a Prince song infringed copyright. Yeah, that's how desperate it's getting.
Luckily, EFF sued Universal on Lenz's behalf, arguing that Universal abused the DMCA by improperly targeting a lawful fair use. A federal appeals court affirmed that copyright holders must consider whether a use of material is fair use, before sending a take-down notice. But don't worry, that still didn't stop the studios from wrongful DMCA take-downs. Tons of them still going on today.
The studios have made it clear they are not going to play fair, and they will step over anybody's rights that they need to to get exactly what they want."

You know the irony of all this is, is that those that willfully and blatantly commit copyright infringement rarely ever get there channels taken down and if they do. They just start a new channel. It's like gun control laws. They only keep guns out of the hands of law biding citizens and not the criminals.

 

[Isadoorian]

From 3 hours ago:

Lucasfilm REVOKES the Warner Chappel copyright Claim; the Video is no longer in Jeopardy

 

[AGXStarseed]

From 3 hours ago:

Lucasfilm REVOKES the Warner Chappel copyright Claim; the Video is no longer in Jeopardy

Awesome news.
Here's hoping that when Star Wars Theory uploads the rest of his Vader fan film series that Disney/Warner-Chappell don't do the same thing again.

 

[Isadoorian]

Awesome news.
Here's hoping that when Star Wars Theory uploads the rest of his Vader fan film series that Disney/Warner-Chappell don't do the same thing again.

It was mainly Warner Chappell that was trying to do it because of the Music, but yes I hope so too

 

[Theta.G]

Unlike the Vader film, however, Disney and Warner-Chappell haven't gone after this one despite using the actual music and both Boba Fett and Darth Vader appearing in the film. So, how come one fan film is completely fine to be up on YouTube yet the other - which uses characters from the films but has original music that is 'inspired' by the actual score - is subjected to a dubious copyright claim (I'm sure most of us can name two songs from different artists that sound similar) and then has Disney putting ads on the film so that they can make money on it?
What makes it more dubious is that Disney aren't doing the same thing to people who are making reaction videos to the Vader film - which is, as Star Wars Theory states, "very rude and very vindictive". It seems a lot like Disney targeted this one just because it was getting millions of views and positive ratings.

Ah ok i get your point now. was skimming through earlier. In theory the "just" thing to do would be splitting the ad revenue between disney / warner w.e and the original creators (such as the music producer for the clip) minus the one who forfeited his rights to profit off of it.. However, if that music producer who made his own original score for the project signed any contracts with the creator of the fan-fic that would make him "part of" the project entity on paper. (Not sure how to describe that to you...) then he in part becomes the entity (not person) which formed an agreement with Disney/ whatever. Sort of like how a corporation can represent itself as a standalone entity or the owner of the corp could represent themself instead. Disney may be viewing the group of creators as a Studio which would make it one big entity and maybe the members of that studio are subject to same agreements // stuff behind the scenes, devils in the details.

Truth be told i'm not interested in star wars and haven't spent a large amount of time reading into this particular story. But i have however dug into dozens of others just like this.

In short it's risk / reward. If they hit a small video with tiny views, with a copyright claim they aren't going to get anything out of it. If they did and conquer every little video it will ruin their image. It's better to sit back watch it grow. Then when views per week or month reach a point where it's worth it to possibly sully the name a little for profit... A fraction of the earnings will be used to easily clean up any bad press online that gets out of hand.

That can't be done with unprofitable, small videos since the clean up money would come out of their own pockets.

 

[AGXStarseed]

Ah ok i get your point now. was skimming through earlier. In theory the "just" thing to do would be splitting the ad revenue between disney / warner w.e and the original creators (such as the music producer for the clip) minus the one who forfeited his rights to profit off of it.. However, if that music producer who made his own original score for the project signed any contracts with the creator of the fan-fic that would make him "part of" the project entity on paper. (Not sure how to describe that to you...) then he in part becomes the entity (not person) which formed an agreement with Disney/ whatever. Sort of like how a corporation can represent itself as a standalone entity or the owner of the corp could represent themself instead. Disney may be viewing the group of creators as a Studio which would make it one big entity and maybe the members of that studio are subject to same agreements // stuff behind the scenes, devils in the details.

Truth be told i'm not interested in star wars and haven't spent a large amount of time reading into this particular story. But i have however dug into dozens of others just like this.

In short it's risk / reward. If they hit a small video with tiny views, with a copyright claim they aren't going to get anything out of it. If they did and conquer every little video it will ruin their image. It's better to sit back watch it grow. Then when views per week or month reach a point where it's worth it to possibly sully the name a little for profit... A fraction of the earnings will be used to easily clean up any bad press online that gets out of hand.

That can't be done with unprofitable, small videos since the clean up money would come out of their own pockets.

It's over now, thankfully. Lucasfilm have forced Walt Disney Music Company and Warner-Chappell to drop the claim, so they are now no longer monetising the video.

 

[Iamnotarabot]

It's over now, thankfully. Lucasfilm have forced Walt Disney Music Company and Warner-Chappell to drop the claim, so they are now no longer monetising the video.

Yes and now I can watch it, I guess some people running their business are too old to understand how such a backlash can ruin them in the long term but they managed to get their act together this time.

 

[Mr Allen]

@AGXStarseed, you seriously need to get a life beyond stalking me on here to know how many times I used a particular term.

 

[Fino]

@AGXStarseed, you seriously need to get a life beyond stalking me on here to know how many times I used a particular term.

Being stalked is terrifying. I think you're confusing "stalking" with "remembering." Remembering is involuntary, while stalking, hopefully, isn't.

 

[AGXStarseed]

@AGXStarseed, you seriously need to get a life beyond stalking me on here to know how many times I used a particular term.

Being stalked is terrifying. I think you're confusing "stalking" with "remembering." Remembering is involuntary, while stalking, hopefully, isn't.

Under no circumstance was I stalking - I just noticed on a lot of threads where Star Wars and/or Disney was been talked about or mentioned that you tended to refer to Star Wars fans as 'Butt Hurt Disney haters'. After seeing it a few times, I decided out of curiosity to check how many times you had said it.
Heck, I've probably repeated myself plenty of times and I'm sure a lot of people on the forum have; it was just something I noticed at the time and decided to check out for sheer intrigue - nothing more.

 

[Fino]

If it helps with anyone's perspective, I had the same observation before.

 

[AGXStarseed]

Just as a heads up, Star Wars Theory has posted a new video regarding "Vader - Episode 2" - which will feature the return of a very much alive Mace Windu.
(I can't post the video as there's some bad language in it).